Another Week

Well, hopefully only a couple more of these flashbacks and then we will be caught up.

June 2-9, The Aftermath

Monday June 2nd was my first day at work. First order of business: call the plumber and the electrician. The plumber couldn't make it Monday so it had to be Tuesday. The electrician assured us the cooktop was not functional and that we shouldn't use it, so they unplugged it so we could take it back. When I got home, we took off for ikea and carted the cooktop with us, along with a list of a couple more things to pick up. Well, the returns place said they couldn't help us and we needed to contact the manufacturer - which happened to be whirlpool. We tried and tried and tried to get them to understand: we spent our money at ikea, the product is faulty, so we want to exchange it for a new one. But, to no avail, we drug the cooktop with us for nothing. The list didn't come in handy either as Jodi ripped it into a million tiny pieces, accompanied by, well, you get the picture. So, we almost left the cooktop sitting in a dumpster at ikea, but we decided to take it with us, after all, we still needed to be a little frugal. We went to bed with hopes of running water for tomorrow, but we all know how that is going to turn out, right? Tuesday morning, the plumber showed up. After a few chuckles about my handiwork, he had everything hooked up, and we actually had water! Jodi was giddy, and maybe freaking the poor plumber out. Did I mention we cut the hole in the stainless steel too far from the sinks? The placement of the faucet was kind of arbitrary, so we put it where we thought looked good, and didn't give any thought to what was going on under the surface. I had to 'chisel' out about 2 inches of wood supporting the sink top with the drill using it like a rotary tool (dremel). It was pretty funny. Definately not at the time. The plumber got a chuckle from the wobbly faucet too, and he rearranged a bunch of the washers and stuff and made it look easy. I should mention, we followed the instructions from ikea as to the placement of the washers, so that part wasn't entirely our fault. Next on the list was to call the whirlpool guys, who in turn referred us to a local business who would contract out the electrician to come and check out our stovetop. The fellow came Wednesday. Five inches of his crack was hanging out the entire time he performed the operation. No englische either. Jodi describes him as the most offensively rude acting and looking person ever. We let him in, and the wild boar started wreaking havoc on the contents of our house. He used dish towels and duct tape for hot plates (to protect his gentle hands) - the duct tape actually melted onto one of the burners. When he had the cooktop uninstalled, he scraped up the stainless steel counter beside, and Jodi had to grab a random rug and stuff it underneath. Needless to say, Jodi and him had it out for at least 25 min. (remember, nobody understands each other) and they phoned me and our translator Martin at work to figure things out (on the guy's cell phone, we still didn't have a phone). The final verdict: the cooktop is functioning normally, and the smoke will wear off and the brownish hue of the cooktop is not out of their specifications. By the end of his 'test', all four burners had smoke coming off of them and had turned the entire cooktop surface browny. Note to self, and everyone reading, whirlpool/ikea blows. Please do yourself a favor and don't buy electrical stuff from ikea. At first, we wanted to stand our ground and take this to the highest authority, but after 2 more days of the run-around (ikea-whirlpool-frommer-local electrician) we figured no one was responsible, so we have given in to the big corporate machine. We are getting soft. Remember superstore? So, we resigned to get the original electricians back to hook the thing up, and they reluctantly did; they still didn't think it should work like that. Well, either it works for a long time, or maybe it will break down all the way pretty soon, and we can completely whiz 120 euros down the toilet. Enough about the cooktop. Jodi's main hope was to cook a meal before Mom was scheduled to go home, but the electricians came back the day that Mom went home - Thursday. We were glad to have the kitchen finally hooked up and complete, but we felt we were drug through the mud for so long that it wasn't even that exciting to have a functional kitchen. Thanks Mom G. for all the help during the first couple of weeks, we couldn't have done it without you. And thanks for sacrificing three weeks of your life, it was definately no holiday. Thursday was a pretty sad day with mom leaving, as we had grown quite accustomed to the team we had. Friday was much of the same. As was Saturday. And Sunday. We were enjoying the slower pace and getting things sorted out and organized. Well, I suppose that's the end of this week, the next blog will be about our trip to Colmar, France, that we did on June 14 (the next Saturday). We'll leave you with a picture of Reese, enjoying one of the many (!!!) books we brought with us.

Jodi and Jeff